Cliff Osmond was a prolific character actor on film and television and an instructor who estimated that he had taught more than 10,000 actors, many of them in Dallas, where he started his career and returned to teach for decades.

Osmond, 75, died Dec. 22 of pancreatic cancer at his home in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles.

A public service is being planned for January.

Osmond started his acting career on a scholarship at the Dallas Theater Center in 1961, said his wife, Gretchen Petty Osmond of Pacific Palisades.

A 1959 graduate of Dartmouth College, Osmond stopped in Dallas to visit a college friend who he had heard was acting in Dallas. He auditioned for Paul Baker and received a one-year scholarship with the Dallas repertory company.

“He was the next to the last student accepted and I was the last student accepted,” his wife recalled.

At the time, Osmond was still using his birth name — Clifford Osman Ebrahim — which he later changed to Osmond. In Dallas, Cliff Ebrahim had supporting roles in A Waltz and The Visit before taking the lead role as Gen. Sam Houston in The Shadow of an Eagle.

In 1962, he and Gretchen married and moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in insurance and waited for a break into show business.

“Within a year of coming to Los Angeles he began to work — nonstop,” Ms. Osmond said.

His first television role was on The Rifleman. He appeared on television more than 100 times over four decades on shows including Gunsmoke, All in the Family and a 1962 episode of The Twilight Zone titled “The Gift,” according to The New York Times.

In 1982, Osmond returned to the Dallas Theater Center to play Lenny in Of Mice and Men.

In Dallas, Osmond was asked to hold an acting class — then another.

“Once he finished the run of Of Mice and Men everybody said, ‘Please come back,’” his wife said. “He came back weekly.”

Osmond taught across Texas.

“For decades he taught in Dallas, San Antonio and Houston,” said his daughter, Margaret “Mishi” Ebrahim of Washington, D.C. “A lot of the working actors in Dallas have studied with my father.”

Osmond became a well-regarded acting teacher to entertainers, including Armand Assante and Carlos Alazraqui, the Times reported.

Osmond was born in Jersey City, N.J., and grew up in Union City, N.J. He received a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.

He appeared in many films, including four Billy Wilder comedies.

He played private investigator Purkey in The Fortune Cookie, the first film starring both Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau; the amateur songwriter Barney in Kiss Me, Stupid, with Dean Martin, Kim Novak and Ray Walston; a police officer in Wilder’s version of The Front Page, which also starred Lemmon and Matthau; and another police officer in Irma La Douce, according to the Times.

In addition to his wife and daughter, Osmond is survived by a son, Eric Ebrahim of Los Angeles, and a grandchild.